The William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa presents a two-day symposium on "Practical Pluralism" on Friday and Saturday, April 16 and 17. The symposium, which is free and open to the public, features panel presentations with a variety of expert participants including local and international faculty discussing Native Hawaiian rights, issues and history, and pluralism and human rights.

Panel sessions will take place from 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. on Friday, April 16, and from 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 17. The sessions will be held in Classroom 3 of the William S. Richardson School of Law (2515 Dole Street).

A book reception honoring Professor Eric Yamamoto of the School of Law will also be held as part of the symposium on Friday, April 16, at The Plaza Club. The event celebrates the recent publication of Yamamoto‘s book, "Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment," which is considered one of first impression as it explores national security and civil liberties issues of historical and present-day import.

Yamamoto served as a member of the coram nobis legal team reopening Korematsu v. United States and has participated in the litigation of many civil rights and human rights cases. He has also published the award-winning book "Interracial Justice: Conflict and Reconciliation in Post-Civil Rights America."

Yamamoto is also one of the featured participants in the two-day symposium. Joining Yamamoto are other notable UH Mānoa professors including Williamson Chang of the School of Law; Jonathan Osorio, Wendell Perry, and Kanalu Young of the Center for Hawaiian Studies; Noenoe Silva of the Department of Political Science; and Ty Kawika Tengan of the Department of Anthropology.

Also participating are Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell, emeritus professor of the John A. Burns School of Medicine; Lynette Hiʻilani Cruz, assistant professor of anthropology at Hawaiʻi Pacific University; Mari Matsuda, Georgetown University Law Center professor and current visiting professor at the UH School of Law; Menny Mautner, professor and former dean of Tel Aviv University School of Law; Sally Engle Merry, Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas at Wellesley College; David Keanu Sai, lead agent of international arbitration proceedings for the Permanent Court of Arbitration of the Hague, Netherlands, and a UH Mānoa political science graduate student; Ko-Yung Tung, lawyer and head of global practice for O‘Melveny & Myers, New York; Carol Weisbrod, Ellen Ash Peters Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law; and Chief Judge Joe Williams, chief judge of the Maori Land Court and chair of the Waitangi Tribunal, New Zealand.

The Practical Pluralism Symposium is sponsored by UH Mānoa Chancellor Peter Englert and the William S. Richardson School of Law at UH Mānoa.

For more information about the symposium, contact Trudy Wong at (808) 956-5516, e-mail trudywon@hawaii.edu, or visit www.hawaii.edu/law/news/.